


I didn't know I was lonely ('til I saw your face)

by lionheartedgirl



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: But also not, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, elena's still in her magical coma, jermey the hunter, kind of platonic, set post s6, talk of others
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:49:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/pseuds/lionheartedgirl
Summary: Mystic Falls makes orphans and nomads of us all. It’s part of its charm.





	I didn't know I was lonely ('til I saw your face)

**Author's Note:**

> title doesn't belong to me (neither do the characters either obviously)
> 
> for the prompt: 
> 
> _I don’t recognize the girl from my hometown.  
>  I know she must have the same face, same chipped teeth,  
> but my father says she’s the kind of person  
> you’ll recognize when you see her_

He comes into the bar, not a local, but he looks just close enough that he’s accepted no problem. A leather jacket, worn boots, and just a hint of gray at his temples. 

“A beer?” He asks the bartender. 

The man nods and heads to the tap. 

Across the room, a blonde, hair up and wearing too short shorts and cowboy boots that once she would have cringed at, dances from table to table. 

She spun as she took away glasses, giving blinding smiles, and leaving her curly hair waving goodbye as she made her way back to the bar. 

She slides up the bar, the man next to her new and getting his first beer. Something about him smelled familiar, but she thought that might just be the leather of his jacket. 

Leather jackets made her think of what had once been home. 

“I don’t know where they’re putting it, but these guys are going through beer like crazy, Jake.” She smiles at the bartender, “Can I have three…no four pitchers of the tap and then at least ten shots of the tequila when I come back.” 

“No problem.” He says already heading away. 

“Caroline?” A voice asks beside her, deep and rough, and so very familiar even after all these years.

She turns, sees Jeremy Gilbert, older and wiser and with a little scar over his eye. 

Caroline flashes him a smile as the bartender returns. 

“It’s Scarlett actually,” She grins at him and he recognizes that smile. He’s seen it too many times before, a lifetime away. “Don’t let the blonde hair fool you.” 

She grabs the tray with the pitchers and heads back to the tables. Her hair swinging in its high pony tail and almost her whole legs showing as she walks, covered up mostly by her boots. 

“Don’t let the smile fool you,” The bartender tells Jeremy, almost like it’s a rehearsed speech. “She’s like that with everyone. And I promise you, no matter how many smiles or laughs or drinks, she always leaves here alone.” 

“I get it.” Jeremy nods. 

He turns his head to get another glance at her though. Smiling and laughing and going from table to table. Everyone seeming to like her. 

He watches her and blonde hair and blinding smile and thinks of a time he thought was lost to him. Even in memory. But there she was permanently seventeen, though she easily pulls off an older look, not much older but older, and almost the same girl from his home town. 

 

\--

 

It’s a little past two a.m. when Caroline knocks on his hotel room. Jeremy opens it, only wearing his sweat pants, and his hair pointing up in different directions. Caroline smiles, and wonders when the last time she saw something so wonderful. 

“Scarlett?” He says with a confused smile. 

She gives him a look. “Can I come in?” 

“It’s a motel, you don’t have to actually ask for an invitation.” He says. 

“No, but it’s usually polite.” Caroline says, though she pushes past him anyways looking around the small room. When she turns around, Jeremy is looking at her. 

“You know, in here you can just call me Caroline.” She tells him. 

He nods, going to his suitcase for a shirt to put on. She pouts a little to herself when she realizes what he’s doing. But it’s gone before he turns to look at her. 

“You were gone when my shift was over.” Caroline says, “Took a little time to track you down. Went to two other motels first.” 

“I feel honored.” Jeremy says. 

“You should.” She tells him.

And then she is in his arms, long blonde hair in ringlets now down and swallowing him as she holds on tight, as though he might disappear. He hugs her back, realizing he’s holding her just as tight (tighter than a normal human could), leaning his head on her shoulder and swearing he could smell the water from the Falls. For a minute she is seventeen, for real, blonde and smelling of spiked lemonade and he is sixteen and smelling of weed. 

Caroline pulls back but not away, her hands coming up to cup his neck, to run over his face. She gently touches the scar she had seen before. 

“You went and grew up on me, Jeremy Gilbert.” She smiles at him. 

“And you went and turned into Scarlett on me.” He tells her back. He’s still studying her, the way her eyes are the same color blue, the way she still has spots of freckles that you can see in just the right light, and the way her hair curled around her face. Though that may just be the humidity. 

“Scarlett’s still kind of new.” She says, pulling all the way away this time, “Eight months top. Before her, it was Blair. I worked at a high end retail store in California for a couple of years.” 

Her body language changes as she speaks, Scarlett was carefree, slouched a little, and spoke with a little twang in her voice. When Caroline spoke of Blair, her body changed, morphed so she stood perfectly straight and somehow looked even taller, her eyes seeming to darken. 

“I had to re-dye my hair like every two weeks there though, so I’m happy to be back to blonde.” She says and just like that, that bit of twang is back. “And with people ask about the name I just say it was my mother’s favorite book.” 

Instead of her own. 

Even Jeremy knew that. 

Just like he knew what he was seeing wasn’t fully Caroline. Not Caroline Forbes of Mystic Falls. The girl who he had known since he was playing in the sandbox. 

Jeremy had used plenty of aliases before, gone by different names, had them on different credit cards, but underneath he was still him. He couldn’t make himself morph into them. 

“So, I know I woke you up but I figure our time is limited.” Caroline dances to the bed, before plopping down on it and beginning to take off her boots, revealing more creamy white skin. 

Jeremy remembers those long legs from when he was fourteen and desperately in love with Vicki but still a guy and Elena and her friends had decided to use their backyard to get a tan in. He remembered Caroline’s long legs that she had already grown into compared to his sister, and the two piece bathing suit Caroline had been wearing. 

“So, tell me all about your adventures, Mr. Hunter man.” Caroline says, grabbing a pillow, and shoving it behind her as she leaned back on the bed, “Though if you could be a little stingy on all your great vampire kills, I’d be okay with that.” 

He lets out a little chuckle and then join her on the bed. Sitting down towards the bottom. “I did chase some werewolves up in Canada until a coven caught wind of me and chased me out there. Apparently they don’t like vampires _or_ vampire hunters.” 

“Something we have in common then.” Caroline smiles again. 

“Yep, Canadian witches hate us.” Jeremy nods and she lets out a little giggle. 

She looks at him and his older face, the touches of gray in his hair and wonders if soon it will turn salt and pepper and if it will look hot on him, and the small wrinkles that show a life well-traveled. And Caroline realizes that even if they were to talk all night, for days, she would barely know any of it.

“Do you still keep your journals for Elena?” She asks him. It sobers the mood a little, but not enough to break it entirely. 

“Yeah, I keep some of the gorier stuff out. Even as a vampire she was never big on me messing with it, even if I was a Hunter.” Jeremy tells her, “And there’s like a week missing from when I got a concussion once. I made up some stupid story about going to the beach for a break and meeting a woman.” 

Woman, not girl. That was who Jeremy was looking for now. 

Age didn’t mean much to Caroline anymore. At seventeen, at twenty one, it did. The Originals, even the Salvatores ages had made her feel so small when she thought about them. But she was older now, not hundreds of years older, but old enough. She saw people different now. And age usually had no baring, vampire or not. 

“I can give you a little of my blood,” Caroline offers, “In a vial or something. To help you heal if anything like that happens again. It wouldn’t be enough to turn you. So I don’t think it would go against your Hunter’s code.” 

“You don’t have to…”

“You’re still Jeremy to me.” Caroline tells him, “Just Jeremy, who used to play with me when Elena and Bonnie played something else. Who taught me how to play video games so I could impress a boy who didn’t even like me back. I’ve been so many different people, but Caroline Forbes is always here and she just…wants to keep you safe.” 

She shrugs, a little, unable to explain it better. 

“Well, whoever could say no to Caroline Forbes?” Jeremy smiles at her. 

 

\--

 

They talk well into the night, swapping stories of places they had been. It had been a different story for each of them, very different, Caroline had even wandered to other countries besides Canada. 

They talked until she fell asleep on his lumpy motel bed, her legs wrapped under her. Jeremy covers her with the blanket and then sleeps over the covers next to her.

She wakes slowly to a warm body underneath her, two arms wrapped around her body and she smiles. She wakes up quickly as she hears the beating of the heart underneath her, hears the blood rushing through human veins. 

Caroline takes in one deep breath and lets it out. Closing her eyes and going back to just lying there. 

She’s not hungry, not really. No more than she always is. And Caroline is on a strict diet to keep herself in control. 

Caroline wiggles a little closer, pressing herself against Jeremy. He’s so perfectly solid beneath her. So real and present. Caroline breathes again, she breathes him in, new and old, leather jacket and stoner hoodie. If she could capture this moment, bottle it, even just take a photograph to keep, she would. And she’d hold on to it forever. 

She knew how rare these moments were. 

How rare they would be. 

Caroline lays there, listening to his heart beat, thump and never waver, and savors every minute of it. It’s about an hour before she can feel him starting to stir, she considers pretending to be asleep but decides against it, instead moving her head so she could see him blink awake. 

“Morning.” Caroline says, giving him a little smile. 

He says something resembling ‘good morning’ around a yawn and she chuckles at him, laying her head back down on his chest. 

“You make a good pillow.” She tells him. 

“Good to know, don’t know how handy it’ll come in my line of work though.” Jeremy says, a little rumble of laughter going through his chest. 

“Then I guess I’m just lucky,” Caroline says, “Being one of the few that know. Like a secret.” 

“I think you and I both know a lot of things that would be considered secrets.” He says, he moves his hand a little, letting it slip further down on her waist. 

“I’m not going to count those,” She tells him, closing her eyes and still doing her best to hang on to this memory, to this moment, “Just this one.” 

They lie there for a while longer, comfortable, and not wanting to move. Though neither of them say it out loud. 

“Do you ever miss it?” Caroline breaks the silence. 

“Miss what?” He asks, his chin touching the top of her head. 

“Home.” 

“Mystic Falls?” Jeremy laughs, “I don’t think anyone smart enough to get out of that town really misses it. It looks pretty on the outside, but it’s all darkness within.” 

She wonders if he misses the irony of saying that to a vampire. 

“Not Mystic Falls, not really,” She says, “Home. Just home, that feeling of being home, belonging there. Do you ever miss that?” 

“Yeah…” 

He’s silent for a little while. 

“I miss the small things I guess.” Jeremy says, “My dad playing soccer with me in the backyard, my mom’s blueberry muffins and the smell of them when I woke up. Jenna trying to convince me not to drink coffee…The Falls and how whatever happened they never changed, they just were.”

“I miss it too.” Caroline says quietly, “I didn’t think I would when I left, but…I miss having a home.”

“Mystic Falls makes orphans and nomads of us all,” Jeremy tells her, “It’s part of its charm.” 

“I’m glad you left.” Caroline says, “And I’m glad you walked into some dive bar last night.” 

“I’m glad Scarlett was there waiting for me.” He smiles though she doesn’t see it. “Maybe, I’ll come back around, see her again.” 

“Yeah,” Caroline says, “I think she liked you.” 

She closes her eyes and they go back to the quiet, she goes back to resting her head over his heart. 

thump, thump.

thump, thump. 

Such a beautiful sound. 

 

\--

 

Jeremy comes back three weeks later. 

He won’t admit it, but he had taken care of one lead only to look for another one that led him to this part of the states. He still has a couple states over to go, but he stops at the bar anyways. Jeremy figures he can have one night for himself. 

He heads to the bar and asks for a beer, a different bartender than the last one greeting him. He looks around for a flash of blonde hair or a dazzling smile, but doesn’t see it. 

“Hey,” Jeremy asks when the bartender comes back, “Is it too early for Scarlett’s shift?” 

“Scarlett?” The man repeats, “She quit at least a month ago. You’re a little late, bud.” 

“Oh.” Jeremy takes a drink of his beer. Bigger than intended. 

“Wait, you’re not Jeremy Gilbert, are you?” 

He looks up surprised to hear his own name, his eyes narrowing on the man. 

“Yeah.” 

“She left something for you.” The man says, suddenly going to the back of the bar and shuffling through papers. He finally comes back with a small box. 

“Here you go.” 

Jeremy finishes his beer, putting down his money, and then heading out to his truck. He opens the package inside.

It’s not much, something wrapped in a piece of paper, the rest filler. When he unwraps it, it reveals a carefully made vial full of dark blood, attached to a necklace. He smiles a little when he sees it, remembering Caroline offering that night of the hotel. 

_“Caroline Forbes is always here and she just…wants to keep you safe.”_

He looks at the paper and sees Caroline’s familiar writing. 

_I think my next name will be Emma. I hope you get to meet her._

_Stay safe._

Jeremy hopes he gets to meet her too, or whoever comes after.


End file.
